In the field of multi-beam satellites, a known prior art forward link payload for a multi-beam satellite, a forward link allowing receipt of NGW radiofrequency signals from at least one main terrestrial station so as to re-transmit said signals to at least one terrestrial terminal, comprises:                one or more reception antennas for receiving polarised radiofrequency signals;        a regeneration device for regenerating radiofrequency signals, also called a repeater, comprising:                    NGW low noise amplifiers LNA for amplifying each of the radiofrequency signals;            NGW signal divider devices for separating each radiofrequency signal distributed over NGW uplink channels;            NC frequency converter circuits generally for frequency translating and filtering the NGW radiofrequency signals so as to re-distribute said signals in accordance with a frequency plan of the downlink over NC downlink channels;            NC high-power amplifiers for amplifying the NC downlink radiofrequency signals; and            NC output bandpass filters for filtering each of the NC radiofrequency signals.                        transmission antennas for transmitting the regenerated radiofrequency signals to one or more terrestrial terminals, each signal being associated with a single basic coverage area called a cell.        
A drawback of this prior art is that this leads to the use of a very considerable number of components, which leads to a significant increase in the mass of the multi-beam satellite.
In addition, patent application WO 2004/103325 describes a multi-beam satellite using two cell plannings of the honeycomb type superposed on one another in an offset manner. Each cell planning uses three different frequency bands and the same given polarisation for all their cells, which makes it possible to use a six-colour frequency re-use pattern. The polarisation used by one cell planning is orthogonal to the polarisation used by the other cell planning. The superposition of the two layouts combined with the orthogonal arrangement of the polarisations of the two layouts makes it possible to obtain central regions in which the interferences between cells are reduced.
A drawback of this prior art is that the frequency re-use pattern is not optimal.